Local Voices Lake: Feb. 20 edition

February 20, 2014

(Jennifer M. Kohnke, Chicago Tribune)

Letters to the editor from Lake Forest, Deerfield and Mundelein.

A lifetime of changes

I remember the Ice Age. You see, I am 82 and can remember back to the days of the iceman walking into our kitchen, tugging behind him a huge block of ice melting a little, giving off frigid vapor, and watching him heave the block into the bottom of our icebox or what we now call the fridge or the refrigerator.

In the sweltering heat of our summers, before air-conditioning, he and his ice block were welcome indeed. It was a happy scene.

Since then, of course, technological improvements and innovations have radically transformed our worlds and living styles. And, in my view, the most powerful force for change has been the development of the computer. As a senior citizen and widow of three years, I am grateful for the opportunities it offers me to keep in touch with other people of all ages and to keep my mind active. As a writer, artist and poet, it has allowed me to meet and exchange ideas with people having similar interests and enabled me to publish my first book.

I am astounded by the world of fresh insights and knowledge available at my fingertips through the Internet and, more specifically, Facebook, Twitter and Google. A funny thing is, years ago, when I worked at getting my master's degree in English, I had to handwrite my papers. Due to a birth injury, I couldn't synchronize my hand and arm movements sufficiently to master typing. Today I use the "hunt and peck" method on my computer keyboard, but thanks to the dramatic improvements in editorial technology, typing is a joy and, comparatively speaking, a breeze.

Life holds many surprises. I now know I have lived through an Earth-shaking revolution. There is no way I could ever have visualized the changes I have seen and am now seeing. It is a new planet today, a vastly different one from that of the 1930s, where I spent the days of my childhood, my Ice Age.

— June Luvisi, Lake Forest

Marijuana laws

This is in response to "Legalizing marijuana" (Voice of the People, Feb. 2), by Peter Bensinger, former administrator of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (1976-1981).

In his letter to the editor, Bensinger argues that legalizing pot will leave the cartels cheering.

The cartels will evaporate. They thrive on the profit generated because pot is illegal. A look at history, Prohibition, shows that the gangsters who thrived on prohibition did disappear when Prohibition ended.

He also mentions that teenage pot use will skyrocket. But the evidence, in other countries, in Colorado and in much of California argues that he is wrong. It's easy for a teenager to get pot. Legalizing it would make it harder, similar to cigarettes and alcohol.

I agree that we need to change federal law. I agree that pot is bad. But so are cigarettes and alcohol, and we can't solve the problem by making them illegal.

— David Bogolub, Deerfield

Pension crisis

We often speak with praise of our Founding Fathers who framed the Constitution of the United States. There were men of considerable intelligence and knowledge of law. They knew enough to adopt a Bill of Rights to limit certain powers of government; and we know that many early people of position were known to have spoken that "the government by the People" needed to safeguard against a government becoming too powerful.

Now we in Illinois are facing levels of debt that cannot be reconciled in the foreseeable future. The state pension debt of billions of dollars is increasing every day.

Those people who wrote the Illinois Constitution wrote in such protection for state pensions that they left no room for it to be amended. The attempt to legislate some level of reparation will surely be struck down by the courts.

We as taxpayers need to become a louder voice than the labor unions, whose members have united to arrogate their position.

The only way to fix the financial state of the pension system is to initiate progress toward what is necessary to achieve a constitutional amendment.